A metaphorical injury

I wake this morning with what feels like writing energy but I could be wrong. I am wrong about so many things these days, not least myself. Maybe it is not writing energy but jetlag that wakes me at 5:30 with images and ideas swimming through my head.

The theme of them is being wrong, how often in the past three weeks in Congo I was wrong, how many versions of being wrong I have experienced. I might have titled this post, “So You Think You Can _____”. (Add “speak French.” “Write.” “Keep up.” “Adjust.” And, yes, “dance.”)

I was wrong so often that I got used to it and came to expect it. I became cheerfully wrong, wholeheartedly wrong, laughably wrong. I remembered that being wrong was the one dependable, consistent cross-cultural experience. That in order to learn anything you have to be wrong first.

It started right at the beginning of the trip, before I even got to O’Hare on July 12 to leave for my second visit to Congo in two months, to attend the centennial and 50^th anniversary celebrations of two branches of the Mennonite Church in Congo. This was going to be such a great trip. I was going to learn so much, meet so many people, see friends I had learned to know the previous time, and, above all, start a new writing project.

This was the first step in the next phase of my life. I had just retired from decades of work on environment and peace. I was free. I was now going to become a real writer. How often have I told myself that? But now the dream of becoming a real writer was going to come true and my topic was … well, a little hazy but I thought it would be something like a travelogue, a visit to African Christian spirituality with an emphasis on Mennonites.

But really, it was about me becoming a writer at last, with my own book, written in the style of V.S. Naipaul or Ian Frazier, looming large in my imagination. That was the big step, the one that would propel me, finally, to realize my own potential as a writer.

And so, I was given a metaphorical injury.

The white rented van that took nine of us centennial attenders from Goshen, Indiana, to Chicago had a high floor and no handholds to help you get in. A big step. I made it up the first time. The second time, at a rest stop, I depended too much on my left leg to lift me in and I felt the muscle at the back of my knee cramp up. By the time we got to the airport it had fully clenched and I could hardly put any weight on the leg, let alone manage my baggage—two bags to check, one of them pushing the 50-pound weight limit, plus two heavy carry-ons. I was a fully loaded Congo mule, and now a crippled one who had to depend on others to help with the burdens I had taken on for other people.

How many ways was this injury metaphorical? I was carrying “too much baggage,” in the form of my personal ambitions as well as the I-can-do-it-all willingness to carry everything other people asked of me. This was “a big step,” one for which I was not as ready as I thought. I should have asked for help (getting in the van) and didn’t, so now I was totally dependent on other people.

The injury rattled me. Maybe the bad vibes rattling around me were what kept setting off the security alarm at O'Hare when I walked through, after pulling out the three computers plus iPad that I was carrying. So I was subjected to a full pat-down and hand-baggage search while departure time approached. Pastor Jeremy Shue, one of the group in the van, waited patiently for me and carried my carry-ons down the long corridor to the gate while I shuffled along. Boarding had started when we arrived.

As if to reinforce humbling experiences, I made a wrong turn in the Brussels airport 8 hours later and had to hobble through security a second time with my heavy bags, cutting a close connection for the Kinshasa flight even closer and worrying my travel companions. The thing is, I had warned everybody else not to make that wrong turn that Nina had made back in May. And then I made the same mistake.

Pastor Jeremy came back looking for me and helped lug my carry-ons again or I might not have made it. As it was, we had to wait a full 10 minutes for a shuttle to the terminal for Africa flights. The door to the ramp to the plane was already closed when we got there but they opened it for us and a few other stragglers. I collapsed into my seat and took some satisfaction in not being the absolute last one to board. When the free alcohol was offered after takeoff I had myself a vodka tonic.

I was not cheerful about being wrong. Not yet.